Tag Archives: playing piano

How to Choose a Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, we’re going to discuss how to choose a piano. Different people are going to have markedly different criteria for choosing a piano. For example, if you’re an accomplished, seasoned concert pianist, you have very specific ideas of what you’re looking for, and you’ll want to try countless pianos to find exactly the touch and the tone that you’re after. But if you’re like most people, you haven’t had the opportunity to play a plethora of concert-level instruments, you might want to have a trusted person who knows a lot about pianos to help guide the process. I’m going to try to give you some pointers as to what to look for when you are after a piano.

Are you looking for an acoustic piano or a digital piano?

There are many reasons to choose one or the other. If you’re living in a place where sound is an issue, a digital piano might be necessary. There are also silent pianos that you can play with headphones digitally, but they can also be played acoustically. That’s one alternative for you. But you might want to just have a digital piano. Maybe you have a very limited budget, and an acoustic piano is just not in the cards for you. Maybe you’re living in a studio apartment, and you need to put the piano in the closet during the day. Maybe you do music composition and you want something that has a MIDI or USB interface so you can plug it into your computer. There are definitely good reasons to get a digital piano. But if you want the ultimate playing experience, an acoustic piano really offers that.

There are two main types of acoustic pianos: grands and uprights.

The benefits of grands are many because, while a tall upright can rival the sound of a mid-size grand, the action is inferior on even the finest upright pianos. To get a Steinway or a hand-built German piano, an upright costs tens of thousands of dollars. But the hammers on an upright are striking sideways. So there’s a limit to the speed of repetition compared to a grand piano where the hammers have the benefit of gravity since they go up and down. So if you’re an advanced player, and you’re playing things with rapid repetition or trills on upright pianos, those sorts of things can be very difficult. Even the finest uprights don’t match what a fine grand piano action is capable of. Grand pianos also project sound into the room instead of into the wall, so you get a glorious sound! And they’re beautiful pieces of furniture as well. But there are good reasons to get an upright. Maybe you have space or budgetary limitations that make a grand unattainable. A good upright can have a nice sound. And if you’re not playing something with rapid repetition—a lot of trills and other ornaments that require really fast repetition—a good upright could be a great choice for you.

The size of the piano is another important criterion.
The Bigger the Better?
All things being equal, bigger is better on pianos. What do I mean by that? Well, if you ever look inside a concert grand piano, the strings in the treble are very short, and they get longer and longer throughout the entire range of the piano. On a nine-foot piano, those bass strings are really long, so you get an even sound from the top to the bottom. Every other piano is a compromise. If you look at a baby grand piano, by the time you get to the middle register, the strings are all about the same length to the lowest notes of the bass. They just get thicker, and they don’t have the same true sound you’ll get out of a larger piano. Plus, the soundboard area is larger on bigger pianos, so you get a richer sound.

Another thing to consider is the acoustics of the room.

You don’t want to overwhelm a room with a piano that has too much volume because it will affect the way the piano sounds and the way you play it. It can actually damage your hearing. I have a good friend who has a beautiful Steinway model C, a phenomenal scale design at over seven feet. It’s blowing him out of the room! So he has to practice with earplugs. What a shame to have this glorious piano and not be able to fully enjoy it because he’s got to stuff his ears in order to play it without causing ear damage. So make sure you choose the right size piano for your space. And it’s not just the size of the room you need to consider. If you have an open floor plan, it doesn’t matter if the room is small, so long as the air volume is large. If your room has a wood floor and if there is no soft furniture, drapes, carpet, or rugs, even a larger room can be pretty resonant. A room that has carpeting, drapes, and soft furniture will absorb a lot of sound. Also, odd shapes along the wall, such as bookshelves, will diffuse the sound so it bounces around, giving it a more pleasing tone. There’s nothing worse than what are called standing waves. Have you ever been talking in a hallway and it sounds robotic? It’s like two mirrors facing each other, creating an infinite reflection. That’s exactly what happens with sound waves in a small space with parallel walls. The frequency of the waveform will amplify itself, and you’ll get resonant frequencies that are really nasty. You can mitigate that by utilizing absorbent material in strategic places.

Of course, you have to think about your budget.

You don’t have an infinite amount of money to spend. There are basically two types of pianos: hand-built pianos and Asian production pianos. What’s the difference? Well, a piano factory like Pearl River makes over a hundred thousand pianos a year. That’s an astounding number of pianos! It’s more than triple the number of new acoustic pianos that are sold in the United States each year. They can’t make pianos the same way Steinway does. Steinway only makes about 2400 pianos a year. Fazioli only makes 140 pianos a year! Obviously, they can do things differently from a company like Pearl River, Yamaha, or Kawai that mass-produces pianos. There’s a different methodology in the way the plates are made, the woods that are used, and a plethora of other things that can enhance the way a piano sounds and plays.

The problem with hand-built pianos is cost.

A Rolls-Royce costs much more than a Toyota because it’s hand-built from beginning to end. The same is true of pianos. With a company like Steinway, each piano is hand-made instead of having pretty much an assembly line of parts that are mass-produced. You can get a wide range of Asian production pianos, and some of them are very good instruments. Nobody is going to scoff at a CX-series Yamaha. They’re really well-made pianos. But Yamaha has two levels of pianos above the popular C series, and those are indeed hand-built pianos that cost as much or more than Steinway! So you have to figure out your budget.
PIANO FACTORY

Should you get a new piano or a used piano?

Here again, there are many different things to consider. If you’re buying an inexpensive Asian production piano, realize that there’s a limited lifespan. This is because you’re not going to rebuild a piano that’s not that costly to begin with. If you buy, for example, a $25,000 piano new, that might seem like a lot of money, but it can easily cost that much or more to rebuild a piano. So I hate to say it, but most Asian production pianos aren’t worth restoring because the cost of restoring them exceeds their potential value. So it makes sense to look for used Steinways, Mason & Hamlins, Bechsteins, and other top-tier hand-built pianos. Some of the best value pianos could be brands that are no longer made, like Chickering, Knabe, or Baldwin. These pianos were great in their day. Sadly, these American-produced pianos no longer exist. But you could find a good Baldwin used that maybe isn’t even that old. Maybe the piano is all original and still in good shape. The piano could be worth restoring because Baldwin cost as much as Steinway when they were originally made. And many of them are equal in quality to a new Steinway or Mason & Hamlin, which are the only companies still producing pianos in the United States. Some Mason & Hamlin models are made in China today, so be sure you notice the distinction there.

Every piano is unique.

If you play brand new pianos of the same make and model, each one has a different character of sound and touch. Hand-built pianos like Steinway are notably unique from one to the next, which can be a great thing if you find the one you’re looking for. You really have to try each one to make sure it suits you. Asian production pianos like Yamaha and Kawai are more consistent than other pianos because the manufacturing is very tightly controlled. A lot of robotics are used. But even then, no two trees are alike. So soundboards and bridges are going to have different sonic characteristics. There’s also a lot of handwork. Even on inexpensive Chinese pianos, the bridges are hand-notched. So there’s a lot of handwork, even on Asian production pianos. They’re not just all made in a factory by machines. There are a lot of people working in those factories. So each one is unique. You must try the specific piano because even pianos of the same make and model can vary quite a bit in sound and feel. So you really want to try, or at least listen to, the piano you are buying. We provide first-class recordings with excellent Neumann microphones of our pianos, so you can easily get a comparison from one to the next and hear what you like.

So those are a bunch of things to consider when you’re looking for a piano. If you have any questions about pianos, I’m always available for free advice. Just email me at Robert@LivingPianos.com. I’m always happy to help in any way I can! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Learn the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to learn the piano. For me, it’s hard to imagine any other way because, from the youngest age, I started private lessons with my father, Morton Estrin, who was not only an incredible concert pianist, but also one of the most amazing teachers. I was very fortunate to have that opportunity.

Private lessons are a great way to learn to play the piano if you can find the right teacher.

I can’t tell you how many horror stories I’ve heard from people. Some teachers are just mean. Some will even hit their students’ hands with rulers! Many times, people study for years and years and discover they really haven’t learned how to play anything with solidity and confidence, because teaching any subject is an art that very few people possess, sadly. But I’ve known many people who have picked up piano on their own just by playing and listening. And they have managed to figure out how to play things to their own satisfaction. Formal piano instruction isn’t one size fits all. Some people can just pick it up on their own.

There are other ways of learning the piano.

Online resources are tremendous these days. I’ve seen people who have had great success just from watching YouTube videos with the notes going down, almost like Guitar Hero. To me, that seems much harder than reading the notation. But some people just want to learn which keys to push down. And you know, some people do very well just with that. But there are many other online resources. Here at LivingPianos.com, we have thousands of articles and videos on just about every subject you can imagine. What other possible avenues are there for learning the piano?

Piano classes are a great way to get introduced to the piano.

With piano classes, you have the social element, which can make it fun and enriching. However, I have taught piano classes, and the problem is that everybody has drastically different abilities on the piano. So private lessons are much better for really getting to any sophisticated level on the instrument. It’s not like some people are better and some people are worse. It’s the types of abilities. There are so many different skill sets that are necessary to play the piano. There’s the actual physiology and what type of hands you have, the connection from reading the score to the hands, the sense of rhythm, the sense of pitch, the sense of sound and tone. There are so many different aspects! People have talents in some areas and weaknesses in others. In a class situation, it’s very difficult for a teacher to really cater to everybody, and so it brings down the median level because the teacher can’t possibly be sensitive to everybody’s needs. But if you just want to get your feet wet, see how you like it, and meet other people who are interested in the piano, a piano class can be a good choice.

However you choose to learn the piano, it can be greatly rewarding!

Private lessons, if you find a great teacher, is a great way to learn to play the piano. Just experimenting on your own and having fun with it could work for some people. There are also online resources. It’s amazing what you can find on YouTube and other places on the Internet. And lastly, just if you want to get your feet wet and try it out, piano classes can give you an idea of what you’re getting into. Can you think of any other ways to learn the piano? Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How Mozart Broke the Rules

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how Mozart broke the rules. Did Mozart really break the rules? What do I mean by that? It’s a funny thing that we, in retrospect, analyze music from hundreds of years ago, and come up with the forms these great composers composed in.

The quintessential form of all time is the sonata allegro form.

Sonatas are generally three- or four-movement works (sometimes two movements), and the first movement is almost always in the sonata allegro form. Why do they call it the sonata allegro? Because the first movement is usually the fast movement, and allegro means fast. In a nutshell, it’s a three-part form:

A. Exposition

– Theme 1. in the tonic key (the key of the piece)

– Theme 2. in the dominant key (the key starting on the 5th note of the scale of the key of the piece). – The Exposition Repeats-



B. Development: This is a free development of both themes
C. Recapitulation

– Theme 1. in the tonic key (the key of the piece) – Theme 2. in the tonic key (so the movement ends in the key it started in!)

The exposition has two themes. The first theme is in the tonic key, which is the key of the piece. The second theme is in the dominant key, which is five notes higher than the tonic. Then, the whole exposition repeats.

I’m going to outline it here in Mozart’s famous K 545 C Major Sonata, so you can see how he broke the rules.

The first theme is in C major, naturally, which you would expect. It continues to the second subject in G major, and the entire exposition ends in G major. This is a classic sonata allegro form. That’s the end of the exposition. Then you come to the repeat, and the entire exposition repeats.

After the exposition, you come to what’s called the development section. The development comes after the double bar, after the repeat, and it’s a free development of both the first theme and the second theme. After the development section comes the recapitulation. What’s the recapitulation? It’s a repeat of the beginning. You have theme one and theme two. Except theme two this time doesn’t modulate to the dominant. It stays in the tonic. So the piece ends in the same key it started!

But Mozart takes a turn that is unexpected.

Then the first theme comes back in F major, the subdominant. How did this happen? It continues in F major. But the first theme is supposed to come back in the recapitulation in the tonic key, C major, but we’re in F major. Then it goes to the second theme in C major, which is what you would expect. But there is never a restatement of the first theme, the opening theme in C major, which is a textbook of what a sonata is, and he just leaves it out. In fact, that statement of the main theme in the subdominant in F major is simply part of the development section. He never gives you the first theme in the recapitulation in the tonic key as expected. The recapitulation just has a short statement of the first theme in the subdominant, F major, in the development section. Then it goes right into the second theme in C major to the end. So yes, Mozart broke the rules.

All great composers break the rules!

The rules are just observations after the fact. It’s all the deviations from what you expect that make music great. Lesser composers do exactly what you think they’ll do, and it’s boring! Composers like Mozart or Beethoven are so full of surprises, always taking turns you don’t expect. That is the secret of great music! I’m wondering what you think about this. Are there any examples that you can bring to the table? Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Are There Musical Geniuses Like Mozart Alive Today?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Are there musical geniuses like Mozart alive today? In the world today with billions of people, there have got to be some people with tremendous talent. There are great players and child prodigies, but is there anybody at the level of artistry, creative beauty, and pure genius of Mozart?

The answer is yes!

If you have not seen her already on YouTube, you must check out Alma Deutscher. I’ve been following her for years. She started posting on YouTube when she was five. There are videos of her playing the violin from a very young age. She is unlike any musical talent I think you’ve probably ever seen in your life. Just to give you an overview, she’s now 18 years old. She has composed three operas. She composed her first complete opera when she was only ten years old! There are some videos of her performing where the audience chooses notes and she improvises using those notes. She can instantly create a composition on the highest level, beyond what you would think of as improvisation.

She is an accomplished pianist, violinist, and singer.

She’s great on all three of these instruments, as well as being a conductor. She’s written violin concertos, piano concertos, and three operas. It’s just amazing. You could see her evolution through time. But from the youngest age, there is a spark of joy in her, and an appreciation for beautiful melodies, which just flow out of her naturally, whether she’s improvising or composing. If she just played the violin, sang, played the piano, or composed even a fraction of the music that she’s written, she would be noteworthy. But the fact that she does all of these things is astounding! She is much like Mozart, who was great on violin, piano, conducting, improvising, and composing for so many different ensembles, from opera to piano to symphonies, from the youngest age.

There are still musical geniuses like Mozart alive today! But where can they shine?

Are there places for people like Alma Deutscher? Where will her career take her? This will be very interesting. Many composers today are in the film industry because it’s one area where people can actually make a living composing music. We no longer have royal courts with benefactors the way they existed back in Mozart’s time.

I want all of you to check out Alma Deutscher!

Check out her compositions and her improvisations. Watch her from the youngest age to what she’s doing now. I think you will be astounded at this world-class musician in our midst. I just thought I’d call it to your attention to her. I’m interested in other great artists of our time. If you know of anyone like this, share it in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Alma Deutcher Improvisation

https://www.almadeutscher.com

https://www.youtube.com/@AlmaDeutscher

How Much Freedom Is There in Musical Performance?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. How much freedom is there in musical performance? If you listen to the same piece by different performers on the piano or any other instrument, you’ll find dramatically different interpretations. How much do you have to be faithful to the score, and how much can you just take off and do what you want to do? The answer may surprise you!

You want to play faithfully to the score.

If somebody was listening to a piece of music written by a great composer and they were transcribing it note for note, they should end up with the same score that the composer wrote with every last detail. Does that mean that every performance should be the same? No, surprisingly, because you can execute every detail of the score in different ways to indicate what is written, and different people have various ideas about how to achieve that.

I’m going to give you a great example today, which is Debussy.

Debussy was a French impressionist composer from the early 20th century. His music is a wash of colors and sounds. And yet, it’s important to have the clarity of what is intended in the score come out in your performance. But there is more than one way to achieve that. For example, sometimes there are double-stemmed notes, a note with a stem going down and a stem going up. Why are there two stems? Well, that note is part of two different lines of music, like different instruments playing. It may be 16th notes and 8th notes at the same time. One voice is on the top and one voice is on the bottom. Sometimes voices overlap, and they both hit the same note at the same time. The composer wants you to understand that and project it into the performance. It creates different sounds. So in the first movement of Debussy’s Children’s Corner Suite, there are double-stemmed notes. Interestingly, it starts off in the third measure with double-stemmed eighth notes (with staccatos), which intersect with 16th notes on the bottom. What makes it even more interesting is that starting in the fifth measure, you have a similar passage except with double-stemmed quarter notes with 16th notes on the bottom. This is a subtle difference which is the genius of Debussy creating nuances of sound. (You can reference the accompanying video to hear this on the piano with the score provided.)

Ideally, you want to do as much as you possibly can with your fingers and then use the pedal for expression.

That’s just one example where the composer wants to have different lines of music, and it’s up to you as a performer to find a way to execute it to create the effect. On the seventh measure, you have the same pattern twice, but the first time with a crescendo/decrescendo, then it repeats with no dynamic changes. There are all kinds of subtle phrasing, double stemmed-notes, inner lines, expression, and crescendos. What I have found over the years is that if you really learn the precision of where the crescendos start and end, exactly how many notes are slurred, attention to double-stemmed note values, and you delineate all the minutiae of the score, it brings the music to life!

Be sure you’re not working from a heavily edited edition of the score.

You want to follow the markings of the composer, not the editor, because the editor may or may not have great ideas. You should always know what the composer had in mind with an urtext edition, one that is not edited, or one that clearly indicates what’s coming from the editor rather than the composer. That way, you can get in the head of the composer and get an idea of the concept of what they really were after. Those small details all come together to mold a great performance. So you can indeed follow the inclinations of the composer and do so with the conviction of how you believe the music can best be expressed. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at Living Pianos: Your Online Piano Resource. Join the discussion at LivingPianos.com where you can leave your comments on countless articles with accompanying videos.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Recharge Your Piano Playing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to show you how to recharge your piano playing. Have you ever gotten a piece to a really high level and played it on a regular basis, but somehow it goes stale? It’s just not quite there. It’s not like there are trouble spots you can practice. The whole thing just doesn’t have the spark that it once had. How can you get it back into shape? I’m going to show you today. There are some very basic techniques that are going to do the job for you.

Slow practice is one of the most important aspects of piano playing.

I have had the opportunity to study with some absolutely stupendous piano teachers, including my father, Morton Estrin, Ruth Slenczynska, Constance Keene, and John Ogden. They all practiced slowly. Every fine pianist I have ever met practices slowly. Even when you can play something up to tempo, going back and practicing slowly is absolutely essential on the piano. You should also take your foot off the pedal. Listen to what your fingers are doing. The pedal covers so much. I can tell you that these two tips I have just given you are so fundamental that every great classical pianist uses them.

Use the score.

Even if you have a piece memorized, it’s not good enough. You have to reinforce your memory. Do you think you can remember every single detail, like where a slur ends, where a crescendo begins, or the exact voicing of every chord? You must constantly reinforce your memory!

Use the metronome.

Practice with a metronome to keep yourself honest. Put the metronome on a nice, slow speed. Play with no pedal and keep your eyes on the score. The amazing thing is that just going through it slowly like that a few times will already clean up your playing enormously. But if you really want to develop a stellar technique, you can do all the speeds in between, where necessary. You might not have to do all the speeds everywhere. But any place that doesn’t come out consistently or feel comfortable, do progressively faster metronome speeds on those sections.

I remember watching my father practice when he was preparing to record his Brahms album. I used to watch my father practice all the time. I loved it! It was really enriching. I remember he got to a point where he was playing through everything just slightly under tempo without the pedal. It was totally relaxed and clean. That’s what you want. You want to get to the point where you get it up to tempo and it’s all comfortable. The notes are just there. You don’t have to work to make it come out. And because you study the score again and again, slowly seeing every detail, you really perfect your performance.

This is a great way to get any piece back into shape!

If you have a piece that’s gone stale or a piece you’re performing and you want to make sure it’s still in good shape, this technique is bulletproof. Practice slowly, with the score, no pedal, and using a metronome. Try it in your practice! You’ll be amazed at what this can do for your playing! I hope this is valuable for you! Let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com